Jason Leow, CEO of CapitaLand Mall Asia, will get to attend the grand opening of six new malls in China next year
Singles’ Day is in the books and while this year’s online shopping event brought in $17.8 billion in sales, some firms still prefer retail to be a brick and mortar affair. CapitaLand is among the most bullish on the country’s retail sector after Singapore’s leading developer announced that it will open six new malls in China in 2017.
The six Chinese shopping centers are part of the firm’s plan to complete a total of eight malls covering one million square metres of gross floor area next year. There will be two malls in Shanghai and one in Shenzhen with four more retail centers in Chinese second tier cities. Also in 2017, CapitaLand will open a mall in Kuala Lumpur and another in India.
“We are looking forward to the opening of these eight malls next year as they underscore CapitaLand’s strength in connecting retailers to ready catchments of shoppers,” Jason Leow, CEO of CapitaLand Mall Asia, said. “We will continue to enhance our retail scale and network through acquisitions and management contracts.”
While talk of a glut has scared off some investors from retail opportunities in the region, CapitaLand’s 2017 plans constitute its largest roll-out of retail space ever by gross floor area.
No Stopping CapitaLand In China
A REIT managed by CapitaLand bought the Galleria Chengdu mall in August for $226M
The planned mall openings are just the latest in series of China-related headlines for the Singaporean property group. Just last month CapitaLand’s fund management division closed on the largest private capital raise in its history. The Raffles City China Investment Partners III fund brought in $1.5 billion to invest in mixed-use developments in China’s gateway cities.
The fund is CapitaLand’s third such integrated development private investment vehicle aimed at the China market.
Also this year, a real estate investment trust managed by CapitaLand acquired a shopping mall in Chengdu from BlackRock for RMB 1.5 billion ($226 million). The six-storey Galleria mall in the city’s Xinnan Tiandi retail area and was 100 percent occupied at the time of the agreement with tenants including H&M, Nike and Swarovski.
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